


Raising Sirius

by mad_martha



Series: Coming Home [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-09
Updated: 2011-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and his son discuss life, families and relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raising Sirius

"What do you mean, you lost him?" Harry demanded.  "Where?  We haven't been back here five minutes!"

"He got away from me and headed off into the forest," Sirius said, a little sulkily.  "I yelled and yelled, but he didn't listen."

"Oh, hell."  Harry paused in the middle of the room, unsure what to do.  "We're going to have to look for him, Sirius.  There are things in the forest that could eat him, dammit!"

"I didn't _mean_ to lose him," Sirius began, aggrieved, but Harry shook his head.

"Doesn't matter what you _meant_ to do, Squirt.  Come on, we'd better - "

He was interrupted by a sharp rap on his office door.  When he opened it, a dark-haired woman in jodhpurs and a red roll-neck sweater was standing there.  She was about his own age and roughly his own height; Harry didn't recognise her, which meant she had to be one of the new staff members taken on over the holiday.

"Professor Potter?" she demanded.

"That's me - "

"Melissa Ruff-Ryder," she said, taking his hand before he had a chance to offer it and pumping it briskly.  "Professor of Care of Magical Creatures."

"Of course - I'm sorry, I haven't met all the new - "

"The caretaker says you own a dog," she interrupted.  "Brindled lurcher type?"

"That's Scruffy!" Sirius exclaimed, peering around his father's shoulder.

She peered back at him, her face breaking into a smile that displayed a set of rather large, very white teeth. 

"Lost him, did you?" she said cheerfully.  "Not to worry, I've got him.  He's tied up outside my office - that's the hut down near the edge of the forest."

"Thank you," Harry said gratefully.  "I thought we were going to have to search the forest for him.  I'll come and get him."

"Hm.  You might want to take a look at him first."  She grinned at Harry in a way that made Sirius duck behind his father with a smirk.  "Looks like he got into the hippogriff paddock and had a fine old time in there."

"Oh … lovely."  Harry grimaced.  Then he wondered if it would be cowardice to hold his hands in front of his crotch; there was nothing remotely subtle about the professor's expression and he hadn't been checked out like _that_ by someone in quite some time.  He hoped she would get a grip before the first staff meeting of term.  "Okay - we'll come and take a look."

"Fine by me!  Let me know if you need a hand."  And she was gone again as quickly as she'd arrived.

Sirius let out the kind of explosive snigger that only teenaged boys were capable of.

"Yeah, I'll bet she'll give you a hand if you want!"

"Sirius!"  Harry glared at his son, but the boy only grinned back at him impudently.  "She's a teacher, you horrible brat - show some respect!  Besides, I'm spoken for."

"So?  He's in London and she's here."

Now Harry was aghast.  "I beg your pardon?  Are you suggesting - ?"

Sirius shrugged, still grinning wickedly at his father.  "It's just an idea!"




"I went wrong somewhere," Harry muttered.  He grabbed his son by the scruff of his neck and hauled him towards the door.  "Come on, you.  Let's view the damage before we have to get ready for the welcome feast."

 

xXx

 

Scruffy was tethered to a large iron ring set into the hut wall some way from the front door.  It wasn't hard to see why - he was living up to his name in a way he never had before.

"Phew!"  Sirius dragged the long sleeve of his t-shirt over his hand and muffled his nose with it.  "You foul mutt," he said to the dog rather indistinctly.

That about summed it up, Harry thought, appalled.  Scruffy was coated, from the tip of his nose to the end of his hesitantly wagging tail, in something dark green and stinking.  Hippogriffs were omnivores and possessed highly efficient digestive systems; the Hogwarts hippogriffs lived on a diet rich in fresh meat, grass and a kind of grainy horse-cake, and their dung was correspondingly redolent. 

"I need to unpack my trunk and put my robes on," Sirius began, backing away, but Harry grabbed him before he could move more than a few steps.

"Oh no you don't," he said grimly.  "You lost him.  You can help me clean him up."

"It'll take more than the odd cleaning charm to sort that out," Professor Ruff-Ryder said, popping up at Harry's side.  "There's a tin bath in my office - relic of one of the former incumbents, I believe - and a well just around the back of the building.  Need some help?"

"We'll be fine, thanks."  Harry had a strong suspicion that her 'help' would be unnecessarily hands-on.  "Come on, Sirius."

The tin bath had probably been nothing more than a rather close-fitting hip-bath on Hagrid (who had almost certainly been its original owner) but it was a sizeable reservoir to any ordinary person.  Harry levitated it outside to the well and began to fill it.  Scruffy sensed his fate and started to whine.

"He doesn't want to be bathed," Sirius told his father as he helped him to haul water.

"He should have thought about that before he covered himself in _parfum de hippogriff_ ," Harry retorted heartlessly.

"I'm going to be late for the welcome feast."

"You should have thought about that before you let Scruffy run off.  And the welcome feast doesn't start for another couple of hours."

"Professor Ruff-Ryder would help you - "

"How would _you_ like to take a roll in the hippogriff paddock?"

Sirius shot his father a dark look but said no more.  They poured about eight inches of water into the tub, then Harry tapped it with his wand to heat it.

"Thought you could use some soap."  That was Professor Ruff-Ryder - again - offering Harry a large bottle of Blitz! Muck Remover.  "Sure I can't help?"

"Really, we're fine," Harry said through gritted teeth.  "Thank you."

"Oh!  Well, I'd better be off to the castle.  I'll let them know where you are, shall I?"

"Yes.  Thank you."

She lingered for a moment or two, but when Harry offered her no encouragement to stay she reluctantly set off for the castle.

"You won't get rid of her that easily," Sirius predicted, with some enjoyment.

"You don't need to sound so pleased about it.  Besides, I thought you liked Ron?"

"I do."  Sirius sounded genuinely surprised at this question.

"So why the hurry to set me up with someone else?" Harry demanded.

"Well … it's not adultery if it's polygamy."

Harry hit his head on the well bucket and cursed.  "What on earth - !"

"That's what Tedjminder says.  His dad has three wives."

"Tedjminder comes from an entirely different culture, Squirt!"

Sirius was eyeing him in a way that was reminiscent of his childhood, when he'd been trying to lure his father into letting him get away with something he knew perfectly well was wrong.

"So?" he offered, rather weakly.

"So if you try using that so-called logic on European girls, you're liable to get a nice, painful hex to your rear.  If they don't aim for your tackle first," Harry added pointedly.  "I don't recommend it."

"What about blokes?" Sirius asked.

Harry gave him a startled look.  Admittedly his son was thirteen, fast approaching fourteen, and was just starting to show real interest in the subject, but he hadn't expected this particular question.  Perhaps, given the boy's upbringing and his own preferences, he should have.

"Depends on the bloke," he replied warily.  "I wouldn't suggest it to Ron.  He had a nice, traditional upbringing and believes very firmly in monogamy."

"Oh.  What about you though?"

"What _what_ about me?"

"You wouldn't be interested in having someone else as well?"

"No!" Harry told him firmly, astonished at the question.  "Honestly, Sirius!  Have I ever?"

"I s'pose not."

There was a pause as they both held their breath and grabbed Scruffy.  He was decidedly unhappy about being put in the bath, but fortunately the tub was big enough to prevent him escaping or even employing the usual canine trick of having one or more paws outside of it.  Harry and Sirius grimly lathered him up.

"What's with the questions, Squirt?" Harry asked, when it was possible to breathe without gagging.

"Nothing," Sirius mumbled.

"Don't give me that.  Do I really look like I'm desperate for a fling with a fellow professor?"

"No, but - "  Sirius stopped.

"But what?"

There was a pause.  Harry seized Scruffy's snout to hold him still while Sirius sponged the lurcher's ears and face.

"Don't you miss him?" Sirius said eventually.

"What do you mean?"

"Ron.  You're up here all the time and he's down there.  Don't you miss - stuff - when he's not around?"

Harry looked at him.  The teenager looked genuinely anxious and Harry was conscious - not for the first time - that Sirius seemed to worry about him almost as much as he worried about Sirius sometimes.  Although this was the first time it had ever manifested as concern about his sex life, but Harry didn't make the mistake of thinking Sirius's questions were prurience.

"Of course I miss him," he said, more mildly than before.  "But it's not like I don't see him from one term to the next.  I get days off and so does he.  We plan things and I can owl him whenever I like ….  That's how relationships work, Squirt.  You work out ways around problems, and if you have to go without seeing someone for a while then you … manage it.  You don't just decide that there's a spare evening in your diary once a week and find someone else to fill it.  Well, you could I suppose, but generally speaking it doesn't work out.  One person is certainly enough for me."

There was another pause.  Scruffy was starting to look more like his usual brindled self under the foam.

"Hold onto him," Harry told Sirius.  "I'll get some more water and rinse him off a bit."

He hauled up another bucket of water, warmed it with a charm and poured it over Scruffy slowly from nose to tail.

"That's better - how does he smell?"

Sirius wrinkled his nose.  "Like a wet dog."

"Better than a hippogriff's intestines.  I'll settle for wet dog.  Stand back - "  Harry levitated Scruffy out of the tub and set him on his paws several feet away.  The moment he was released, the dog shook himself violently in one comprehensive bout and went mad, racing around and around the well at high speed, yipping and growling.

"Make sure he doesn't get back into the paddock!" Harry warned Sirius, and he turned to dispose of the dirty water in the tub.

The sun was going by the time they left the hut; another hour and the Hogwarts Express would be arriving at Hogsmeade.  On the long walk back up to the castle, they both tried at points to catch Scruffy with a drying charm, but the lurcher was remarkably nimble where magic was concerned and had no problem evading them.  Harry resigned himself to a lecture from the caretaker about wet paw-prints in the corridors.

"We'll be in time for dinner after all," he observed to Sirius.

"I bet Professor Ruff-Ryder would have saved you some dinner anyway," Sirius told him, clearly cheered by the thought.

"It'd be just like Professor McGonagall to make me sit next to the woman for the rest of the year," Harry grumbled.  "Ruff-Ryder indeed!  Maybe I should tell her I'm gay and get it over with."

"You might as well tell everyone in the school, then, because _someone'll_ find out you said that and spread it around."  Sirius grinned at him, impudence restored.  "Besides, it wouldn't be true, would it?  You're not really just gay."

"I'm giving it serious consideration as a lifestyle choice at the moment."

"Will you ever live with Ron?" Sirius asked unexpectedly.

"Um … I don't know."  Harry tried not to be surprised by the question.  It was something that wasn't on the cards for him and Ron at the moment, although they'd talked about it at one point.  Neither of them had entirely ruled it out.  "Why, do you think we should?"

"Maybe one day, yeah?  I like Ron.  It'd be more fun living with him than _Maman_ , that's for sure."

Ah!  The reasoning behind some of Sirius's remarks suddenly became clear.  Harry tried hard to be charitable about Cleone, especially in front of Sirius himself, but it was becoming more and more difficult as the boy grew older.  Sirius had spent two weeks with his friend Tedjminder in India at the beginning of the summer holiday this year, and from there had gone straight to his grandparents in Provence for another two weeks.  Cleone had been there at least part of the time, but Sirius hadn't had much to say about her when he returned to England.  Two weeks was probably the longest period he'd spent with his mother in the past ten years.

"You wouldn't want to live with her, then?" Harry asked as casually as he could manage.

"Nope." 

Harry wondered if Cleone had the slightest idea of how perceptive kids could be, especially teenaged boys.  In his experience, especially latterly, he found that people rarely gave boys credit; just because they were more inclined to put on a good mask of indifference didn't mean that they didn't see what was going on around them.  And that mask of indifference didn't mean they were unaffected by what they saw either.

"I suppose she didn't get married, then," Harry said neutrally, referring to something Cleone had said to him just over a year ago.

"I don't reckon she was ever going to," Sirius said, shrugging.

"Maybe not."

"She's got another bloke hanging around now."

"Yeah?"

Another pause.  Scruffy found a stick and bounded up to Sirius hopefully; Sirius took it and threw it for the dog, but in a very preoccupied way.

"What's up, Squirt?" Harry asked him.

Another shrug.  " _Maman_ made a big fuss about seeing me when I got to _Grand-père_ 's house," he said.  "But she says stuff she doesn't mean, you know?  She said she wanted to do loads of things with me, but sometimes she'd change her mind or just go off somewhere or forget.  So one day I went out with Aunt Adele instead and when we got back _Maman_ got really mad about it."

Cleone had never behaved any differently towards Sirius.  As a child he'd simply accepted it - possibly because Harry had always been there to smooth over any upsets and make up for any promised treats that she 'forgot' - but he wasn't a child anymore and he was too old now not to see that her behaviour was unreasonable or inconsiderate. 

And she, Harry thought bitterly, was too stupid to see that a boy growing rapidly towards manhood would not be as uncritical of her as a child.  Teenagers were unforgiving.

There was a set of stone seats just outside one of the side entrances into the castle which were usually grabbed by prefects for meetings in good weather, with small lamps burning above them now that dusk had fallen.  Harry took Sirius's arm and steered him towards them.

"Sit down a minute, Squirt …."

They sat down and after a moment Scruffy flopped out at their feet, mouthing his stick contentedly.

"Look," Harry said quietly.  "Some people just aren't good parents.  It doesn't mean they're bad people, it doesn't mean they don't love you either; it just means that they don't know how to provide the things their kids really need.  I'm not saying that there aren't horrible, sadistic people out there who hate their kids and treat them really badly, because there are.  But some people, like _Maman_ , simply don't know how to do the right thing and they hurt you without meaning to."

He was suddenly struck by a memory of a long-ago day at Grimmauld Place the Christmas before his godfather died.  Of Sirius Black doing or saying something that had caused an awkward silence between them, then saying unhappily _I'm sorry, I'm not much of a father to you, am I?_   The memory still ached.  He had been the best kind of father he knew how to be, which might not have been what people like Molly Weasley thought was right, but was the only kind of father Harry had wanted.  The awkwardness had not been his fault.

"She makes a really big deal out of spending time with me," Sirius muttered, "but when I'm there she changes her mind."

"That's because she hardly ever sees you," Harry said.  "She gets a fixed idea of what you're like in her head and when she actually meets you, you're not what she was expecting.  She does love you, Sirius.  She just doesn't know how to treat you."

"It's not that I don't want to spend time with her," Sirius said.  "It's just - she does stuff and says stuff - stuff about you _and_ me and - and - I'm _me_ and it's not my fault if I'm not exactly what she wants me to be - "

"Hey, it's okay.  I know."  Harry had become more careful about touching Sirius over the past twelve months, but now was not a moment to dither over teenaged pride and personal space.  He hugged his son, not letting go of him.  "You're fine the way you are.  I love you the way you are, and so do your grandparents and the rest of your family and friends, okay?  It's not your fault if _Maman_ has a problem with that and you mustn't feel like you have to change to make her happy.  Because - " Harry hesitated, then thought _what the hell_.  "You could do everything she wanted and it wouldn't make any difference, Squirt.  You could never do enough or change enough to make her happy, do you understand?  The only person who can make Cleone happy is Cleone, and until she learns that she'll always be discontented and looking for someone else to blame for it.  You're just a handy target when you're around, but she does the same to everyone else.  If I'm there, it's my fault that you aren't the person she expects you to be.  I bet she yelled at Adele for taking you out, didn't she?"

"She said Aunt Adele was always doing stuff to make her look stupid," Sirius mumbled.  "She said … she said Aunt Adele was being spiteful and trying to steal me because she doesn't have any kids of her own and she's jealous, but _Dad_ – "

"That's a pretty rough thing to say," Harry said softly.  "Adele can't have kids, you know."

"Yeah, I know.  _Grand-mère_ told me.  But why does she say it?" Sirius demanded explosively.  "She said it to her once before and it really hurt Aunt Adele, I could tell.  And it's not true, Dad!"

"I know it isn't, Squirt, but it's easier for her to accuse Adele of that than to admit that she should have been taking you out herself."

"Well, I told her I didn't want to visit her again if she was going to be horrible to everyone," Sirius said sullenly.

Scruffy, perhaps sensing the boy's mood, abandoned his stick and crept to his side, resting his head on Sirius's knee.  After a moment Sirius stroked him.

"What did she say?" Harry asked.

"She yelled at me.  She said I was rude and offensive and insulting, and she didn't ever want to see me again either because I was just like you."  A pause.  "And that's not true either!" Sirius said angrily.

Harry chuckled, although it wasn't really funny.  It was such a typical outburst from Cleone though.

"She'll her change her mind," he told the boy, but Sirius shook his head angrily.

"I don't care!  I don't want to see her, and I told _Grand-père_ so."

Harry wondered what Yves Roussard had made of that.  The man had raised four sons of his own, though, and probably took the outburst for what it was – the passing temper of a teenaged boy.  He didn't need to ask what the resulting lecture had been like, having received a couple himself from Cleone's father once or twice, and he had a fair idea of what Roussard had said to his daughter as well.

"Look," he said, after a while.  "I've found that the important thing in dealing with _Maman_ is not to let her get to you.  You have to accept that she is what she is – I know, I know, it's not always easy! – and try not to let her disrupt your life too much.  Trust me, within a couple of months she'll have forgotten all about this and want to see you again – "

"Well she can't - "

"Sirius, she's your mother.  You can't change that, and if you keep refusing to see her you'll just make yourself look like a stroppy kid and her look like a martyr.  Do you want that?"

Sirius muttered something that could be taken as a "No" by the charitable.  Harry let it pass.

"On the positive side, you won't see her before Christmas at the earliest," he said bracingly.  "So let's forget about her for now and get ready for the feast."

A little cheered by this – and probably by the thought of seeing his friends imminently – Sirius followed Harry into the castle with a lighter expression.

 

 **\- The End -**


End file.
